JAMES FALLOWS AT THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY HAS A CONTEST FOR THE BEST WIKILEAKS QUOTE
No, he’s not downplaying the seriousness of the leaks Fallows assures us, it’s merely that there are some damn good quotes hiding in that quarter of a million document flood.
INTERPOL HAS ISSUED AN ALERT FOR THE ARREST OF WIKILEAKS’ FOUNDER JULIAN ASSANGE
Assanges mother is pretty distressed. Reuters has the story.
The mother of Australian WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said on Wednesday she was distressed by an international police alert for her son’s arrest and did not want him “hunted down and jailed.”
Global police agency Interpol issued a “red notice” on Tuesday to assist in the arrest of Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, who is wanted in Sweden on suspicion of sexual crimes.
Assange, 39, a former computer hacker now at the center of a global controversy after WikiLeaks released a trove of classified U.S. diplomatic cables at the weekend, denies the Swedish allegations…..
MEANWHILE…a “hacktavist” who calls himself Jester has claimed credit for crashing the Wikileaks website two days in a row, reports the LA Times..
HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYERS LEONARD WEINGLASS AND MICHAEL RATNER JOIN DEFENSE OF WIKILEAKS
Leading US human rights lawyers, Leonard Weinglass and Michael Ratner, have joined the defense team for Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, writes Tom Hayden.
Hayden also writes that the US Justice Department is seeking indictments on espionage charges [against Wikileaks] from a grand jury quietly impaneled this week in arch-conservative Alexandria, Virginia.
Why is this drama important? Not because of “life-threatening” leaks as claimed by the establishment, but because the closed doors of power need to be open to public review. We live increasingly in an Age of Secrecy, as described by Garry Wills in Bomb Power, among recent books. It has become the American Way of War, and increasingly draws the curtains over American democracy itself….
A WITNESS LIES, A MAN IS CONVICTED, THE 9TH CIRCUIT IS BORED, VETERANS ARE FURIOUS.
The NYT Times Adam Liptak has the story. Here’s how it opens.
Elven J. Swisher wore a replica of a Purple Heart on the witness stand when he testified that the defendant had tried to hire him to kill three federal officials.
Asked about the medal, Mr. Swisher pulled a document from his pocket to show that he was entitled to it and many others for his service in combat in the Korean War.
Mr. Swisher said the defendant, David R. Hinkson, an armchair constitutionalist with eccentric views about the tax code, had asked him how many men he had killed. “Too many,” Mr. Swisher recalled saying.
All lies. Mr. Swisher had never seen combat, had killed no one and had served without distinction. The document was a forgery. Mr. Swisher has since been convicted of lying to federal officials, wearing fake medals and defrauding the Department of Veterans Affairs of benefits for combat injuries.
But the jury knew none of this, and with Mr. Swisher’s testimony it convicted Mr. Hinkson of soliciting three murders. He was sentenced to 33 years for those crimes, along with 10 years for tax evasion, and he is serving his sentence in the maximum-security prison in Florence, Colo.
When Mr. Swisher’s lies came to light, Mr. Hinkson challenged his convictions for soliciting the murders. The jury had believed him guilty of more than loose talk, he said, only because Mr. Swisher had falsely presented himself as a battle-hardened killer.
But the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled against him last year by a 7-to-4 vote.
Mr. Swisher’s lies, the majority said, were no big deal…..
Read the rest and opine.
COMMUNITY HEALTH CLINICS WORK TO TAKE UP THE SLACK IN SOUTH LA
With MLK Medical Center not due to reopen until 2013, residents of surrounding South LA communities are relying for basic health care on overcrowded underfunded neighborhood health clinics.
Neon Tommy has visited several of those clinics and has returned with reports about at how these desperately-needed community health faculties—and the patients who depend on them for critical services—are getting by.
In one of the stories, Ryan Foughnder and Kaitlin Parker spent time at a Lynwood women’s clinic and found the place barely hanging on in terms of funds, but proud of the quality of care it was providing.
MORE THAN 1000 LAUSD WORKERS WILL LOSE THEIR JOBS WITH LATEST ROUND OF CUTS.
The LA Times reports.
THE CITY AND CHIEF BECK WANT TO HIRE MORE COPS, BUT THE LAPD UNION SAYS PAY OVERTIME FIRST
Joel Rubin and David Zahniser have the story—and it’s an interesting one.
Here’s how it opens:
It came as little surprise this week that the influential union that represents Los Angeles’ rank-and-file police officers waded into the debate over hiring more police during a major financial crisis.
What caught people off guard, however, was the union’s conclusion that the hiring should stop.
Los Angeles Police Protective League President Paul M. Weber, in an interview and an opinion article submitted to The Times, called on the city’s leaders to suspend their current policy of hiring new officers to replace those who resign or retire. It is a stance that, on the surface, runs counter to the union’s traditionally staunch support for a larger police force.
Instead, Weber said, the department should shrink itself in order to use its scarce funds to restore overtime pay that has been cut because of the city’s budget woes and to fill some of the hundreds of civilian posts at the Los Angeles Police Department that have gone vacant.
Police Chief Charlie Beck said the union’s plan would jeopardize public safety. “We’d all like to return to a time where officers are paid for the overtime hours they work,” he said. “But it is not in the interest of public safety to do that” by thinning the ranks of officers.
And Matt Szabo, deputy chief of staff for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, added, “It’s hard to imagine how the union is motivated here by the public’s safety,” noting that the LAPD has pushed down crime significantly in recent years.
The PPL reveals its true stripes here, which have been apparent all along: basically in conflict with public safety.
Kinda makes whoever they endorse suspect.
Kinda makes the very fact that they’ve become so politically active under the current leadership of Weber and “consultant” Novey suspect.
Kinda explains why they’ve tended to endorse those who are outsiders/ newcomers/ desperate for their support at all costs, vs. those who have demonstrated a genuine concern for public safety: Whitman over Brown/ Essel over Krekorian/ Trutanich over Weiss…(Cooley over Kamala is more of a local conservative vs. outsider liberal thing- they’d have gone for him even if she had supported the death penalty.)
And why they’re at such open odds with their last two Chiefs in particular, Bratton and Beck, who have a mandate to put public safety first. PPL accuses them on their blog, and indirectly via “Jack Donphy/ Pajamas Media” of not caring for the rank & file (much less so for Beck, with his whole family being steeped in law enforcement, and who can’t remotely be labeled “elitist,”), but they don’t get that the circle-the-wagons attitude of yore, the Gates era, was precisely what got them into trouble in the first place. What cost community support, necessitated the Consent Decree…And I would think the “thin blue line” stretched too thin would make them feel less safe on the streets.
P.S. Only thing surprising is that as the article opens, it “caught people off guard” that the union wants hiring to stop. WHERE have the observers been all along? There have been extensive debates about this in the City Council, e.g., with the conservatives and self-styled “budget hawks” – Zine, Parks, Smith, Perry that I can think of offhand – wanting to freeze recruit classes, while the “liberals” like Garcetti, Gruel and Weiss when they were there, not sure who else now – tend to side with Chiefs Beck and Bratton on growing the force to the 10,000 and ideally, 12,000 number.
RANCOROUS debates have ensured. Hardly off the radar! Some of those voting for the freeze, like Smith, were just looking at the budget, it seems (even as Parks and Perry, especially, demanded MORE cops in THEIR districts) while others (“did I tell you I’m a former cop and am still in the reserves?”) notably Zine, seemed to be pandering as always to the PPL with an eye toward their next office.
Did SBL really post that or was it Jesse Ventura? Everything is so suspect, what a bunch of nonsense. When liberals spew about police work I laugh for hours.
Thanks.
Sure Fire Says:
December 1st, 2010 at 11:47 pm
When liberals spew about police work I laugh for hours.
…………
My thought’s when reading Dutta’s op ed last week.